Introduction – Data communication for sustainable development

6 Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium Open Geospatial Consortium OGC

v. Submitters

All questions regarding this submission should be directed to the editor or the submitters: Name Affiliation Bart De Lathouwer OGC Mike Jackson Univ. of Nottingham Lance McKee OGC

1. Introduction – Data communication for sustainable development

The Anthropocene is an informal term suggesting that human activities have now affected the planet to such a great extent that they mark the beginning of a new geological epoch . In this new epoch, world peace and prosperity, and perhaps our survival, will depend on how well we collaboratively manage our interactions, not just with each other, but also with the Earths atmosphere, water, soil, geology, energy resources and non- human life forms. Figure 1: Now, in the Anthropocene, human activity is the dominant factor effecting change in the Earths rocks and soils, water bodies, atmosphere and flora and fauna. We need to tune and sharpen our information technology for the purpose of managing change to benefit present and future generations. 7 Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium We mustnt discount the fact that we have already begun managing our interactions with Earth systems: For example, fewer new dams are being built, energy efficiency is improving, controls have begun to be placed on pesticides and herbicides, and early programs are in place to limit CO2 emissions. We are also getting better at managing our responses to Earth systems impacts on us. Our science, technology and collaboration have brought us steadily improving disaster response plans and increasingly accurate weather forecasts, algal bloom reports, climate change predictions, soil moisture monitoring etc. that help us to be resilient in the face of Earth system events. Progress toward sustainability has significantly depended on electronic information technology IT that helps us develop and share knowledge about Earth changes and our role in those changes. To build on what has been accomplished, in this paper we argue for the development and use of domain-specific but technically interrelated IT standards for communication and data integration within and between domains that focus on the environment. These domains include each of the Earth sciences and many of the environmental response and management domains: emissions trading, taxing and regulating, infrastructure monitoring, public health, embedded energy trackingreduction, etc. Figure 2: We get a rapidly increasing number of terabytes of data from an explosion of sensors, satellites, citizens, models etc. However, data has little value if it cant be easily discovered, assessed, accessed, aggregated, combined, passed from system to system, etc. 8 Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium Environmental science, education, business and policy require Earth observations and measurements, but data is not enough. Equally important is the requirement to communicate and process those measurements to turn them into information, knowledge, wisdom, policy and business. Maps are also not enough. They put geographic information into a pre-digital paper space. We need to put environmental data – micro, meso and macro, indoor and outdoor – into IT space, and we need to be smarter about how we do this so we can benefit from the extraordinary and rapidly advancing capabilities of information technology. The Earth is a flux coupler, simultaneously coupling dynamic processes of many kinds. Our ability to model complex, dynamic and interlinked Earth systems 5 depends on our ability to transfer outputs along with metadata – data about the data – including measures of error and uncertainty from one model as inputs into another model. The interrelatedness of Earth systems requires that the disciplines focused on different systems – geology, hydrology, meteorology, etc. – use data encodings and geoprocessing software interfaces that are designed to be useful in cross-disciplinary and longitudinal studies. Communication and large-scale data collection and processing depend on the ability of systems to interoperate through standards-based interfaces and encodings. Standardization means, “agreeing on a common system.” In many cases these necessary standards dont currently exist. Despite the success of the Open Geospatial Consortium in raising the profile of these issues, more needs to be done to raise awareness of the required standards and the benefits they could bring. This paper provides examples of how this standardization work is currently being done and outlines a roadmap for developing a unified set of environmental communication standards. The authors call on stakeholders to help us add detail to the roadmap and enlist domain experts in building a unified standards platform for sustainable development. 2. What needs to be measured and communicated for sustainable development?